Australian quartet The Jungle Giants will be bringing sizzling hot indie rock anthems to Liverpool Sound City this summer 2019! Creators of music that ‘makes you want to dance, but also clench your fists,’ singles such as ‘Used to Be in Love’ and ‘Feel the Way I Do’ have been racking up millions of streams in their homeland. With 3 albums to boast and a number of sellout tours under their belts, it is only a matter of time before The Jungle Giants make a name for themselves on this hemisphere. check out the album “Quiet Ferocity”:

Listen to The Jungle Giants third studio album Quiet Ferocity and one thing becomes clear: they’ve found their sound. The band – featuring Sam Hales on vocals/guitar, Cesira Aitken on lead guitar, Andrew Dooris on Bass Guitar/Backing Vocals and Keelan Bijker on drums/trombone – met in Brisbane at Mansfield State High, and since their first performance in 2011, they’ve released two EPs (The Jungle Giants, 2011 and She’s a Riot, 2012) and two studio albums (Learn to Exist, 2013 and Speakerzoid, 2015).

Quiet Ferocity combines the signature melodic arrangements of their first album with the percussion-laden production of their second and catapults them into asonic stratosphere that is entirely their own sound.
“After Speakerzoid I didn’t write for a while,” Sam says. “I needed to figure out what I wanted to do. I had to get out of my head. Then one day I was in the pool. It came to me, and I made this conscious decision. I told the band I wanted to make banging indie rock. I wanted to make a strong record that I would be happy to play live.”

“I’m so scared to get out of here / But I really want to get out of here.” It’s a line from “Strange Light”—a late standout from the sophomore LP by The Goon Sax and I’m not sure there’s a lyric that better sums up the feelings of late adolescence. Those prime years when your conflicting instincts are all fucking with each other, and the endless possibilities preached at you from childhood become paralyzing instead of promising. Growing pains and dawning realizations abound, but it’s in this mess that we finally wind up meeting ourselves. It’s an experience you might have all over again after listening to We’re Not Talking, the latest effort from the Brisbane trio. The band’s first album, filled with achingly familiar suburban references like Target and sweaty-palmed hand-holding, was released when Louis Forster, James Harrison and Riley Jones were just 17. This makes Talking, released two years later, an interesting crystallization of growing up. Taken out of context, a line like “I never knew what love meant / And I still don’t,” would be grounds for a heartbreaking ballad, but here it’s just a passing observation, a scanning self-analysis on the way to being an adult. For The Goon Sax, growing up sounds pretty good.

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2019 is the going to be a good year for Australian band Sweater Curse’s moment. After a year of clever youngsters delivering some of the best indie-rock music, I’m ready for more, and this Brisbane trio is ready to provide. They’ve yet to release their debut LP—or even an EP—but their singles, especially the regretful “Can’t See You Anymore,” were enough to grab our attention. If they opt to release full-length material in 2019, they’re bound to attract fans of artists like Forth Wanderers, Camp Cope and Snail Mail. But Sweater Curse aren’t copy-cats—their walls of sound, tongue-and-cheek phrasing and vocal teamwork are entirely their own. Writing songs that have been described as ‘slightly depressing but still groovy’ and ‘introspective, slightly sparkly indie-rock’ the band carved out a niche for themselves with a throwback feel.

‘Mon’s Song’ is the new standout from Sweater Curse, one of Brisbane’s best new bands. It’s 90s crunch meets millenial angst for fans of CAMP COPE or even City Calm Down. Brisbane has a rich history of amazing indie rock and you are carrying the torch with class. They’re drawn to the honesty of the Australian indie-rock sound citing acts like The Smith Street Band to Jess Locke and everyone in between as big influences. They write about moments in their lives and relatable experiences and situations, extending their domestic experience into song form.

A band of 19-year-olds from Australia who have a knack for incredibly thoughtful and structured indie pop, the Goon Sax’s second album is a tremendous reflection of the leaps and bounds the band has taken over its short life. They fall very easily into the grand tradition of Australian and New Zealand indie bands without batting an eye, which is both to be expected considering member Louis Forster is the son of Robert Forster of the Go-Betweens, but also a bit of a surprise since his reported musical awakening was not his dad’s band, but Green Day’s American Idiot. “We Can’t Win” is the album’s understated masterpiece, something that both evokes and transcends its teenage story and authors, much like the album as a whole.

Named after Australian bagged wine, the Goon Sax travel in teenage ennui, that era of your life where the possibilities are endless and your ability to do anything — or even know which movie to watch — feels infinitesimal. Their sophomore album, We’re Not Talking is full of e•mo•tion and teenage malaise, and “Make Time 4 Life” might be the band’s masterpiece so far: It’s a song full of tiny moments of young love, both flourishing and dissipating. This was the best album to overthink your life to this year.

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On her debut EP Sugar & Spice, the young Australian singer songwriter Hatchie has established herself as one of the smartest and most eloquent voices in indiepop. Written in the glow of her first romantic relationship, these five songs deliver grandiose melodies and glimmering arrangements that recall the sparkly jangle of Real Estate. By exploring the space, implicit in the project’s title, where the saccharine euphoria of budding romance ends and its grittier complexities begin,

Australian singer-songwriter Hatchie released her debut EP, Sugar & Spice, in May, and she’s been kicking up quite the shimmery storm ever since. She’s currently playing a sold-out string of tour dates with Alvvays and Snail Mail (what you might call an indie fan’s dream lineup). Before supporting that bill at a trio of shows at Warsaw in Brooklyn, N.Y., Hatchie carved out time to play a set in the Paste Studio, and her starry session is guaranteed to make your day brighter.

Still in high school when they made their ﬁrst album Up To Anything in 2016, their brand of awkwardly transcendent teenage guitar pop took them into end of year lists for BBC6, Billboard and Rough Trade, and earned them raves from the Guardian, Pitchfork, Spin, Uncut, Rolling Stone and elsewhere. According to Metacritic, Up To Anything was the 8th best-reviewed debut album anywhere in the world in 2016.

Up To Anything, their 2016 debut from Brisbane, Australia group The Goon Sax, was a brilliant reminder of indie pop’s effectiveness when it’s distilled to its simplest form: loose, jangling guitars and wry, understated vocals. But when it came time for the trio to record what became their second album, We’re Not Talking, each member of the band found themselves pondering the definition of “pop,” and how it related to the ways they wanted to develop their sound.

“Pop’s a really odd thing,” says bassist/guitarist/vocalist Louis Forster (who is the son of Robert Forster of The Go-Betweens). “I think some people just see [pop] as something sounding polished and ultimately very accessible. But I think pop’s something that exists in a lot of forms, in all kinds of music. On jazz records, there are parts that are really poppy. I guess our idea of pop is a very westernized thing, and it comes out in funny forms; to me, [pop] satisfies something human and subconscious—or it should.”

We’re Not Talking shows how much can change between the ages of 17 and 19. It’s a record that takes the enthusiasms of youth and twists them into darker, more sophisticated shapes, full of lines like “When the bus went past your house and past your stop my eyes filled with tears” and “I’ve got a few things above my bed but it feels so empty, I’ve got spaces to fill and we’re not talking.” Relationships are now laced with hesitation, remorse, misunderstanding and ultimately compassion.

Strings, horns, even castanets sneak their way onto the album, but We’re Not Talking isn’t glossy throwaway pop. Sounds stick out at surprising angles, cow-bells become lead instruments and brief home-recorded fragments appear unexpectedly. This is a record made by restless artists, defying expectations as if hardly noticing, and its complexity makes We’re Not Talking even more of a marvel.

Forster and his bandmates bassist/guitarist James Harrison and drummer/vocalist Riley Jones were determined to push themselves on We’re Not Talking. Forster cites Scott Walker’s Scott 4 and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds as inspirations, as well as the work of ESG, Liquid Liquid, and Jenny Hval. “I really like how [Jenny Hval’s] record had those bits where everything sort of drops back, and it’s just spoken word,” he explains. “We were very obsessed with making something very honest, and she does that really, really well in her lyrics. They’re incredible.”

Jones spent much of the recording sessions trying to funnel her love for Tall Dwarfs’ Chris Knox into the final product. “I’d always be like, ‘Chris Knox reference, Chris Knox reference,’” she laughs, “and it just didn’t really come across. I don’t know if anyone else was behind [the idea], but I was just very inspired by him as a pop songwriter.”

The slippery definition of “pop music” was another topic of intra-band debate during the recording process. On Talking, the group worked with outside producers—Architecture In Helsinki vocalist Cameron Bird and the band’s former drummer/keyboardist/guitarist James Cecil.

“We wanted it to be more polished and poppier than the last [album],” Jones says. “We tried to explain to them what we wanted, but I think they really had different ideas about it, so it was a bit tough sometimes. We were all pushing for things, and we couldn’t communicate or couldn’t find a middle ground.”

Those clashing ideas didn’t undermine the final product, but they did give the band more insight into the ways they approach their career—and the possibilities available to them as a result. “When I said we wanted it to be more poppy,’ they were like, ‘OK, poppy,’ and then they had this completely different idea of pop,” Jones recalls. “I just had no idea that things could be that clean and so produced.”

Adds Forster: “Sometimes you forget that there are words that other people have a very different version of, you know? To us, ‘pop’ probably meant something worlds away from what other people would think. We think quite similarly sometimes, the three of us—we often think that because all three of us are on the same wavelength about something, it must be very obvious to anybody else, when it’s not.”

This deep, personal connection dates back to before the Goon Sax’s 2013 inception, when Forster and Harrison forged a fast friendship thanks to their shared musical interests (the Raincoats, the Clean, the Fall, Marine Girls) and—to borrow Jones’ phrasing similarly “silly” personalities; five years in, those personal bonds continue to provide a much-needed buffer against the trials of being in a band. “After the last tour, I was like, ‘Oh my God, can’t wait to get away from these guys,’” Jones recalls, adding with a laugh: “[I was] really ready for break, and then on day two, I was like, ‘Hey guys, are you doing anything today? Do you want to hang out, maybe?’ I just missed them.”

As the Goon Sax gear up for yet another tour—they’ll be spending the fall playing throughout England and North America—they remain cognizant of (and confident about) where they want their band to go in the future. To that end, We’re Not Talking is not so much a bridge to the next career milestone: it’s more like a roadmap.

“I definitely learned that I don’t want anyone to tell me what to do anymore,” Jones says. “We really thought, like, ‘Oh, we’re young, we probably need some grown-ups giving us some good advice.’ But I just want to be free to create stuff naturally, and to push it really far.”

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This Brisbane-based group taps into the mystic energies of both ‘60s flower power and the 1980s days of wine and roses. Their organ has a nasty bite, their guitars leak fuel all over the place, the drums soundtrack a “youth in revolt” movie. With disaffected alternative vocals moaning lines like “listen up, disengage, fade away” over wah-wah pedals and sitar, it’s not hard to figure out what shrines they worship at. Still, on Trail to Find, they mix together the mysterious and the upbeat with unfettered verve.

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Mallrat’s new EP, In the Sky, bottles up emotion and hands it to you in a dreamy, electro-pop vial. The music she makes is personal, nostalgic. But it’s music for the world, and the world is drinking it up. In The Sky drops this week, Mallrat aka is 19 year old Brisbane local, Grace Shaw and to discuss a love of things that feel old, making the move to L.A, and the ins and outs of her new EP (which she promises is miles ahead of her last one). In the Sky is from a song by The Orwells a song she loved so when she needed a name, when I heard it, it just felt really angsty and like a 90s teen movie. I just love the 90s so I thought it seemed like a good fit.

The rat has become kind of like a symbol for you. Is that just from your name mallrat? Is there any other meaning. Well when I was little my teeth were crooked and I went to my parents and I was like“look, I’m a rat” and they were like “ah, she needs braces”. They took me to the orthodontist and they were like, “quick, we have to fix this issue”.

Mallrat says I think the production on it is sick so I’m really excited for people to listen to it with their headphones on and just find new things they like about all of the songs. And I think all the song are really different to each other as well. But yeah, I love it. So, with the first EP, it was my first time making music. They were literally the first six songs I ever made. So I was figuring it out as I went. I wrote all the lyrics and the melodies but I was just being sent beats on SoundCloud to use. Whereas, with this EP, I co-produced everything. I was a lot more involved in the whole process, which is cool.

In The Sky tracklist Groceries, what’s it about? Mallrat says it’s funny because most of my songs, I don’t mean them to be about anything. It just like ends up feeling like something. But this one, I guess, you could say is about something. It’s about having a crush but not wanting to have a crush on someone. Being like, this is so annoying, I don’t want this. I love being independent, so when you really like someone it can be annoying.

Texas. It’s just a bit emo. And it’s about wanting someone to be well but they’re just struggling. Better. The same thing. Just wanting the best for somebody. UFO is about feeling like an alien. I don’t know how to explain it. Like, I’m sure everybody feels like this sometimes, I don’t feel as if I’m like any of these people. I love all of these people but there’s just something that feels very different. I think I could be from another planet, maybe that’s the only logical explanation. Make Time is my favourite. I don’t know what it’s about. It’s just very calming.

Because I think a lot of people when they write, they want to create a storyline with a character and you get to see where the character is going like a story. But for me, I would just rather pull an emotion, bottle up an emotion that people can listen to and attach to their own narratives, and be like, “oh that’s me”.

Jungle Giants are back for their third album, “Quiet Ferocity”, and let’s just say, it’s anything but quiet.

Sam Hales and co have created a fun, jangly release that surely holds hits that will see you through to the warm summer months. Opener On Your Way Down is solid, with its catchy beats and riffs, and a chorus you just won’t be able to get out of your head. Feel The Way I Do finds some of that ferocity mentioned in the title, a tight number that you can already picture crowds bopping their head to.

Quiet Ferocity marks a change in concept for The Jungle Giants, with Hales taking to the producers chair for the first time. What results is an album that focuses on quality over quantity, choosing to build the record through their musical ability rather than a multi-layered approach that is so often hard to translate into a live environment. Tracks like People Always Say and Time And Time Again show maturity and growth in The Jungle Giants sound and it’s easy to hear that producing the works themselves has influenced their updated sound. Look out for Used To Be In Love and the eponymous Talking Heads-eque Quiet Ferocity, they’ll be with you for days.

Frontman Sam Hales has given us a track-by-track breakdown of the album, explaining the inspirations and stories behind each of Quiet Ferocity‘s 10 tracks.

‘On Your Way Down’

One of the main sonic identifiers on the album, On Your Way Down showcases the band’s ability to combine simple arrangements with melodic intensity. “It makes you want to dance, but also clench your fists,” Sam says. “When I wrote it I knew it was going on the record and everything else would have to make room for this song and nod towards it.”

On Your Way Down is one of the main sonic identifiers for me on the record. It has a simple arrangement, though melodically it’s very intense. I love how it makes you want to dance, but also clench your fists.

‘Feel The Way I Do’

Feel The Way I Do combines charging dance hooks with a contagious scream-your-lungs-out chorus. “The song came from nowhere and I wrote it start to finish. I just had to get it down. It felt like a gift.”

I’ll never forget the day I wrote this song. I always test out a song by dancing to it and when this song appeared to me out of nowhere it made me dance so hard. I saved it 19 times in different folders on my computer because I was scared I was going to lose it.

‘Bad Dream’

‘Bad Dream’ was the last song written for the record. We were having a party at my house. I hadn’t show anyone the song and then I played it over the speakers and everyone was like, ‘That should be on the record!’ And then it was.

‘Used To Be In Love’

When we first recorded this song it wasn’t even a dance song. The song was being super stubborn and I told it, ‘If you don’t want to get on the bus and go to the beach with everyone else then you can stay at home.’ But then we put a 4 x 4 dance pattern in the song and it became something else entirely.

‘Quiet Ferocity’

And then there’s Quiet Ferocity, the album’s title with its massive bass lines that lead into the nostalgic hell-yeah chorus: ‘when we get together/I forget the time’ before right-turning into 3am eyes closed where-are-my-limbs-wait-I-want-to-kiss-you territory.

I wanted huge ass repetitive bass lines that were really aesthetically pleasing. I love how this song has barely any lyrics, and how at the end it takes a complete right turn to dance town.

‘Time and Time Again’

Cesira is a guitar nerd. I realised I was writing three lead guitar lines into the song at once, and then I thought, ‘Why not!’ It’s going to be fun to play live.

‘Waiting For a Sign’

I’m really proud of this song. It formulated like a pop song but it feels like a slow burner. It’s hectic but still retains its chill. It’s got a lot of lyrics and that’s something I don’t often do.

‘Blinded’

Blinded is our Madonna moment. In the studio we were playing with the production elements trying to improve it and then we said, ‘Fuck it. Lets go Madonna.’ When I showed it to Mum she said it sound like ABBA and I was like, ‘Yes, this is what’s happening.’

‘In The Garage’

I really like how people include instrumentals in their records and I wanted to do that too. It’s great being in a different mindset. You don’t have to follow the normal rules you use to make a song. I’m into this song because it shows off all the sounds that are relevant to the album.

‘People Always Say’

People Always Say, Sam says, “Initially, the song wasn’t even going to make the album.” He’d tried so hard he’d over produced it, but the band agreed there was something about it they liked. In the studio, they worked together and simplified it but something was still missing. So Sam pulled out a synth and began hitting different keys. Cesira and Keelan and Dooris would yell, “Yes!” and then “No!” They worked together until they were all screaming, “Yes!” and they knew they’d found the sound. It was a happy accident,” Sam says. “But we had a lot of those, working together. It was awesome and validating, all of us being there in the studio on the same level. It’s the deepest dance-driven song on the record and that’s why we put it last. It felt like a full stop, like we’d built people up to the point where all we could do was say goodbye, until next time.”

‘People Always Say’ is the deepest dance-driven song on the record and that’s why we put it last. It felt like a full stop, like we’d built people up to the point where all we could do was say goodbye, until next time.

Quiet Ferocity is a brilliant reflection of everything the band have released so far, but most of all, it showcases their evolution. Through combining elements of their earlier releases, the four-piece have really started to carve out their sound, with lead vocalist, guitarist and writer Sam Hales producing some of his best work to date with the help of band mates, Cesira Aitken, Andrew Dooris and Keelan Bijker.

This group of teenagers from Brisbane could be your favorite new band. The Goon Sax frontman Louis Forster sings with a David Byrne-like delivery when he says the line that won me over, to his tenuous lover: “Let’s get nervous in your room again.” That’s the moment I turned up the volume.

As often as songs tackle the subject of love, (the wanting, the yearning, the rejection) what’s often missing is earnestness. The Goon Sax are full of that and a dose of humor as well. “Make Time 4 Love” is a song about defeat. Louis Forster wrote to say it’s also about “learning to live with yourself and accepting that everyone’s impulses seem irrational to someone else.”

Musically the Australian trio of James Harrison, Louis Forster and Riley Jones, takes creative impulse from ’80s, punky dance bands. “It was really inspired by [the bands] ESG and Liquid, Liquid, who we were all listening to a whole lot. And we just wanted to make the song really dancey.” In fact, Louis Forster’s dad was in a band from that time period that did pretty well, The Go-Betweens.

The video for “Make Time 4 Love” is directed by Ryan Daniel Browne and is inspired in part by a 1926 animated German fairytale, The Adventures of Prince Achmed, as well as by the 1968 Hungarian animated short, The Kidnapping of the Sun and the Moon. “The video takes place in three worlds,” says Louis Forster. “Wicked, regular, and a third – removed fantasy.” It also draws some of its dark imagery from album art. “The album covers of Tilt and The Drift by Scott Walker were another critical clue for us, and Riley actually bought a copy of Tilt on tour which we listened to and it got us in the right head space.”

Taken from the fothcoming album, We’re Not Talking (out September 14th on LP, CD and digital) via Wichita Recordings and Chapter Music

The Goon Sax are headed to UK/Europe in September/October to celebrate the September 14th release of their second album We’re Not Talking.

Well, I'm dyslexic so writing about something I love: Music, might help but it's most likely just full of mistakes. That title is also lyrics from The Drones song called I Don't Want To Change. Oh, my name is William and thanks for having a look.